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It is estimated that 10% of the world’s coral reefs have been completely destroyed, with an additional 60% damaged, especially in southeast Asia. coral reefs face a number of threats, including water pollution, global warming, reckless fishing tactics, and humans who explode the coral reefs to catch the tropical fish that live in them. When coral dies due to any number of factors, it bleaches, signaling the reef’s damage or death. This map shows that, in southeast Asia, up to 539 species of coral are at risk of extinction. Coral bleaching, at its current rate, is expected to continue to rise.

Coral reefs grow in shallow, tropical waters and in places where warm currents flow into otherwise cooler water. Large tropical reefs are built in the Caribbean Sea, the western Indian Ocean, and the western South Pacific. Non-tropical reefs are built in the Red Sea and near Australia.